Valerie

VALERIE is the tale of an abused 17-year-old who flees to to Hollywood to find it’s even more of a nightmare than home. Will she find a happy ending before the end finds her?   A short student film by Christine D. Beatty screened at the Hollywood Reel Film Festival in 2018. It has found a permanent home at theflickfest.com

Backstory

Christine D. Beatty is a transgender woman who climbed her way out of a world of addiction and prostitution in the 1980s. In that world, she met many fellow sexworkers who’d been driven from abusive homes as children—youngsters who turned to prostitution to survive.

Two decades later Christine volunteered at the Los Angeles youth shelter Children of the Night. For several years she took other clean and sober women into the shelter to share their experience, strength and hope with the teenage girls and boys rescued from prostitution.

As a published author, journalist, and a Cinema Arts honors graduate of LA Valley College, Christine made this, her thesis film, intending to draw attention to the horror of child abuse and child exploitation.

The Movie

Molested by her stepfather and ignored by her alcoholic mother, 17 year old Valerie flees Oxnard for Los Angeles. Her boyfriend Brian tags along as her protector, but nothing can save her from the sleazy reality of netherworld Hollywood. When even a porn model agency turns her away as a juvenile, she does like other street kids and starts turning tricks. Emasculated and desperate, Brian gets hooked on meth and comes to a terrible end. Valerie’s horrific discovery of his body begins the turning point in her life.